A Modern Warrior Woman By Leigh Michaels | January 3rd, 2007
The King of Terrors by Michael McLean –
available online at: http://www.whispersofthemuse.org/Lit/Literary.htm
(just scroll down to “Literary Longs” and it is linked chapter by chapter.)
San Miguel, a small mountain town in northern New Mexico, is the site of the Catholic University of St. Michael. The University has been plagued for two years by a bizarre stalker, whose motives are as mysterious as his behavior. When a graduate student is found beaten to death, it is suspected that she turned on her attacker - the stalker. Meg MacGregor, San Miguel’s Sheriff, begins an intense search for a figure she has previously labeled a harmless fruitcake, while also tracking a local drug ring in a county wide investigation. Meg, who inherited the Sheriff’s Office when her husband died in the line of duty, is an intelligent, hot tempered, half Lakota woman. With the help of her deputy, a young Hispanic Romeo, and his cousin, the office receptionist, Meg sets out to find the stalker. She is aided and sometimes hindered by a cast of small town characters and the people from the University who knew the victim. This includes the victim’s married advisor, with whom she had an affair, the hostile professor of her last class, a friend from a previous University, her fellow graduates and most importantly, Jeremiah Prescott, the absent-minded professor to whom she was engaged. Meg and her deputy attempt to work out some kind of a system to find out what all of the young women attacked have in common and thus begins the monumental search for an unidentified male in a college town. Tired from nightly drug patrols, confronted with mountains of paperwork, Meg feels frustrated and guilty. Since the worst thing the stalker had done to anyone in the past was badly frighten them, she has let the investigation slide in the tide of more urgent matters. Seeking solace, Meg turns to the two men in her life. She is supported by her widower father, a British expatriate who owns the only twenty-four hour restaurant in town, and the ancient priest of the local church who offers Meg what comfort he can. Somehow, with semi-comical élan and a rather haphazard supporting cast, Meg is able to juggle DEA seminars, the murder investigation, a fire at the University and a student overdose to finally locate The King of Terrors. Ultimately, Meg is able to build her case and confront the murderer with his crime.
Several periphery characters create a network of contacts that will form the basis for an ongoing series. These include, the county Sheriff, other officers from the county office and the county coroner. In San Miguel, Meg uses her father’s penchant for gossip, a nurse at the local emergency center and an office girl at the University with a crush on her deputy. The King of Terrors is written to be the tantalizing introduction to the series based on this cast of characters.
by Leigh Michaels